Uber Hires Groupon’s Holden as Product Chief

Uber, the taxi-hailing service for smartphones, is hiring Internet veteran Jeff Holden as its chief product officer, the company’s spokesman said in an email.

Holden will join Uber from Groupon, the daily-deal site which acquired his software startup in 2011. Before that, he spent nearly a decade managing supply chain and software development at Amazon.com.

Holden’s expertise building mobile software may help Uber set its apps apart from rival car-sharing services such as Lyft and Sidecar. Uber’s last major software upgrade came in late 2012, when the company added new tools like fare estimates and better tracking of nearby vehicles.

Chief Executive Travis Kalanick is bolstering the management bench at one of the world’s most valuable private startups. Holden joins a team that includes Chief Technology Officer Thuan Pham, a former vice president at VMWare; and Ryan Graves, a young tech executive who briefly held the CEO post at Uber.

“Having experienced Amazon’s hyper-growth from the very early days, Jeff knows how to think big while building for the long-term,” Kalanick wrote in a blog post.

“This is truly day one at Uber: The vision far transcends what is visible today,” Holden said in an emailed statement. “The idea of being on this journey with this amazing team is truly awesome.”

Holden’s earlier startup, Pelago, built a mobile app called Whrrl that helped users find local places of interest in their cities. Groupon shut the app down after the acquisition and promoted Holden to oversee its products.

Groupon said in a regulatory filing that Holden would be departing the company March 18.

Holden’s experience at Amazon, in the early days of the e-commerce giant, appealed to Kalanick, who has hinted that his company could one day deliver goods around cities, in addition to people.

Uber was valued at $3.5 billion in a round of funding last year from investors including Google Ventures. Kalanick said last month that the company has no plans to hold an initial public offering.

Correction: Uber is hiring Jeff Holden from Groupon. A headline on an earlier version of this article incorrectly said Uber is hiring Pelago, Holden’s earlier startup that was acquired by Groupon.